Work culture in America is much more professional: Anil Kapoor

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NEW YORK – Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor talked about the Globalization of Indian Cinema and Media, as part of the FICCI-IIFA Business Forum, at the Asia Society, on Friday.

After praising the diversity of New York, Kapoor said that with digitization, the world is becoming a smaller place.

“Just sitting at home, in Mumbai, you can reach out to the world,” he said, also emphasizing how important digitization has become for Indian cinema and its media as everything can be uploaded and sent immediately.

In a fireside chat with Viacom 18 CEO Sudhanshu Vats, Kapoor explained his journey of working on the sets of the show 24 when he was here.

“I was here for six months and I shot for 24 over here so I had a very day-to-day experience over here where I met from the writers, to the directors, to the actors, to the prop managers; from the top to the bottom, how they worked,” he said.

Kapoor also explained how he was amazed by the fact that there was a writers’ room and that they created a set of drafts for the script from the blue to the red to the final and that this type of culture did not exist in India.

“So I spoke to Howard (Gordon); I said I want to do this in India and he said fine, ‘will you act like Jack Bauer and I said ‘yes, I’ll act like Jack Bauer,’” and that is how Kapoor was able to bring the show 24 to India, which completed its second season, as he was so fascinated with the thrilling effect that each and every episode brought to him and the binge watching that was associated with it.

He then compared the work cultures in both countries and said that in America there is much more professionalism and preparation which goes into making the show successful whereas in India there is an attitude of “ho jayega, naseeb ho toh chal jayega”.

Kapoor advised the younger generation to not leave anything to luck and to keep preparing as it is the key to success and to keep looking for stories from all around the world.

On a side note, Kapoor mentioned how his wife is fed up with him and his children all being in the film industry.

“Stop talking about films” is what she usually says to them since she tried so hard not to let the film industry influence their children, he said.

“No film magazine in the house, not going on film sets” is how his wife wanted it, but then Kapoor added that even though his children went to study abroad, they eventually all ended up getting into the film industry anyways.